Such is the case with that national treasure, McDonald’s. For years, McDonald’s has stood as a symbol for all that is good and pure in American gastronomy, and has been an edible ambassador to foreign countries across the globe–even to lands opposed to all artifacts of Western culture, such as the Soviet Union and South Carolina. The accepted and official history of the company: that Mac and Dick MacDonald opened the first restaurant in San Bernardino, CA in 1940 as a misguided attempt to impress Adolf Hitler.

It wasn’t until the publication of The Legend of Pappy McDonald in 1952 that the true story of McDonald’s founding was finally brought to light. Fearing media backlash against the lewd and misanthropic history of McDonald’s contained in its pages, Dick and Mac began a campaign to ban the book. Eventually, they convinced Senator Joseph McCarthy to publicly denounce the book’s author as a communist, and all copies of the American edition were burned in massive bonfires alongside other “indecent” literature of that era, such as the Betty Crocker Cookbook and Ernest Hemingway’s controversial memoir F***ing S***balls, Am I Ever An Overrated Drunk! Unfortunately, the book’s manufacturer used substandard pulp for the book’s pages, and all those exposed to the toxic burning copies of The Legend of Pappy McDonald suffered from soft tooth disease and eye warts for the rest of their days.

Luckily, copies of the book reached the shores of godless Europe, where Communism is warmly embraced. There, the book is still widely read, though aspects of the prose may be daunting to contemporary readers, including the frequent use the formal “vous” when the informal “tu” would be more appropriate, and the author’s tendency to expound upon, over chapters and chapters, just how many meatballs he can eat in one sitting. The patient soul, however, will find the true history of McDonald’s founding by 19th-Century prospector/badger-tamer Papatoine “Pappy” McDonald a riveting tale of unchecked hubris and gingivitis.

Amongst the many startling revelations brought forth in The Legend of Pappy McDonald are the following:

• Pappy McDonald was not Scottish, but merely wore the skin of a Scotsman he mercilessly butchered for a handful of plugged nickels.
• The original McDonald’s restaurant, built entirely out of moose antlers in 1893 in Dead Man’s Nostrils, CA, featured a self serve salad bar that contained nothing but a single head of iceberg lettuce filled with live scorpions.
• The original recipe for McDonald’s famous Quarter Pounder required six kinds of bear meat, and a special emulsifier known only as “sour glue.” Modern Quarter Pounders substitute the meat from the extinct Californian Golden Bear with tapioca.
• The first McDonald’s logo featured Pappy mooning then-presidential-hopeful Zachary Taylor, above a caption that read: “Take a bite of of this, Whiggish trollop!” In today’s logo, Pappy’s incandescent backside, in the form of two Golden Arches, are all that remain.
• All hot apple pies served in McDonald’s restaurants worldwide are from the same stock Pappy himself baked in 1902 while attempting to construct the first man-made pie yacht.
• Fearing criminal prosecution for his 1905 slogan, “Disrobe and Your Nuggets Are Free!,” Pappy went underground, emerging years later to compete in the 1916 Amsterdam Olympics’ wolverine toss, where he secured America’s only gold medal that year.
• Pappy’s mysterious death in 1917 was likely the work of French diplomat Serge le Pommefrites, who for years vowed revenge for Pappy’s insistence on calling his deep-fried potato side dish “French Diplomat Serge le Pommefrites is a Crossdressing Nancy Boy Fries.” The dish’s name was later shortened.

To this day, Pappy McDonald is such a popular figure in European culture, even American expatriates find him a worthy figure to immortalize in art. Why, just recently a gentleman posted a t-shirt design idea to the website Threadless.com in the hope of exploiting the international love of Pappy for his own profit:

Why don’t you visit the t-shirt’s critique page on Threadless and offer any suggestions you might have for improving the shirt, or leave a comment below?

It’s what Pappy would want you to do.

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter!

No, that is a lie. Sorry, I lie like a dog sometimes! [transition approach...]

And speaking of dogs [transition success!], today’s Drewsday features one of the most outstanding specimens of the canine community, Sugar! Sugar – family pet of my friend and Bar Exam-passing extraordinaire, Jonathan – endears herself to just about everyone she meets.

Observe:

BOOM! You just got ENDEARED.

So when we needed a spokesbaker for the bag of sugar in Pa’s store, I looked no further than the dog so sweet they renamed sucrose in her honor.

And don’t worry about whether or not it’s sanitary for her to bake cookies. Sugar practices a thorough regimen of washing prior to entering the kitchen:

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

All the images in this post (except the header), © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

]]> http://www.zackrock.com/blog/2010/08/17/sugar-oh-honey-honey/feed/ 3 http://www.zackrock.com/blog/2010/08/03/you-do-the-okey-okie-and-you-turn-yourself-around-thats-whats-its-all-about/ http://www.zackrock.com/blog/2010/08/03/you-do-the-okey-okie-and-you-turn-yourself-around-thats-whats-its-all-about/#comments Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:07:38 +0000 Zack http://www.zackrock.com/blog/?p=679 Sorry about not posting a Drewsday last week! To make up for it, I’ve got a veritable supermarket of product art for you today.

Also, a supermarket.

Since the store in Trail of the Twister is supposed to be a perennial mainstay of the Oklahoman community it’s located in, I wanted to give subtle clues to its longevity via the art within. One method of achieving this is by stocking the store with ancient-looking advertising posters like the one above (as well as a couple others I’ll share later).

The style of the poster itself is a cue to its age – its based on the WPA posters from the 30s and 40s. However, I also created updated versions of the Okey Okie character for use on the current products. The modern Okie is sleeker and more iconic, reflecting the change in advertising art that occurred since the above poster was (supposedly) printed.

And he also sold more than canned goods:

The 3-D artists who worked alongside me on the game liked the new Okey Okie enough that they pasted him up all around the store.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I get paid the big bucks.

In unrelated news, apparently this is my 100th post! So, congratulations to me for being enough of a blowhard to fill 100 posts! Yay! Yay me!

You can’t see it, but I’m patting myself on the back.

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

-Bernard “Beardo” Nickels, Head Guru, Beardo’s Bounty

INGREDIENTS: Organic tofu, organic patchouli marinade (pine bark shavings, humanely harvested bear sweat, words of healing, incense ash, faerie tears), organic baby bok choy, organic sullen teenage bok choy, moonbeams, eight hour guitar solo, Lucy-procured sky diamonds.

Also Available: Curried Soy Chunks, Tempeh Wads in Saffron Sauce.

BE SURE TO CHECK OUT OUR DELICIOUS CEREALS!

In the 13th Century, Genghis Khan led an unstoppable army through Eurasia, conquering all in his path, driven by one burning desire: to discover the world’s greatest soup! Now, BROTH of KHAN invites you to lead your horde into the realms of deliciousness with our mouth-watering selection of hardy soups. Take just one bite and you’ll agree, it’s a soup fit for a KHAN!

INGREDIENTS: Entrails, falcon mutes, the tears of lamentation from the eyes of all enemies of the great khan, corn syrup.

Also Available: Airag Gumbo, Muttonsnout Stew.

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

All the images in this post (except the header), © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

Excuse the hiatus – one of the difficulties of being a professional video game artist is that by the end of the work day my creative energies get a bit zapped. This is especially true when what I’m doing at work is especially creatively challenging and/or fulfilling. Though I’ve recently finished a project that was both, I can’t show it to you for a few months (another difficulty with being a professional video game artist).

What I can start to show you is the work I did on the recently released (like, today) 22nd installment in the ever-expanding casefiles of one Miss Nancy Drew, entitled Trail of the Twister. One of my environments in this game was a Oklahoman Mom and Pop store called – wait for it – Ma and Pa’s. That’s right, I was entirely responsible for coming up with enough product art to fill an entire convenience store.

So, over the next few weeks I’ll be inundating you with products that don’t actually exist, but definitely definitely should. Like this totally edible-looking cereal:

I don’t know about you, but my mouth is watering just thinking about that delicious homunculus!

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

All the images in this post (except the header), © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

So, high on the work of others, I decided to attempt my own (less ambitious) What Are You Like piece:

How about you guys? I’d love to see some of the favorite things of everyone out there. How about this: if you decide to make your own What Are You Like piece, send it over to me and I’ll collect everyone’s together in a future blog post.

Sound good? ‘ight, get to it then!

Designed by the good people at KittenChops, the wrappers were the only reason I even tried my first 3400 Phinney bar (it was the Bread and Chocolate one. How can you say no to that kitty?).

In conclusion, I’m a sucker for quality chocolate wrapped in quality illustration. Oh, and as a passing bit of guidance, if you happen to pick up Theo’s special Venezuelan 91% dark chocolate bar at your local hippiemart, don’t eat it straight. Bake it into a cake or something. 91% cocoa is just… not… pleasant…

Okay, that’s it. Happy Easter!